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Tales from the Wincanton betting ring today. https://simonnottracing.wordpress.com/2015/04/01/tales-from-the-betting-ring-winner-co-uk-raceday-wincanton-010415-bettingtales/
Last night at Cheltenham’s Hunter Chase meeting https://simonnottracing.wordpress.com/2015/04/29/tales-from-the-betting-ring-hunter-chase-evening-cheltenham-290415/
Today’s betting tales from Salisbury. https://simonnottracing.wordpress.com/2015/05/03/tales-from-the-betting-ring-salisbury-030515-betfred-city-bowl-day-bettingtales/
Tales from Kempton last night, big reward for a returned lost wallet? Well you’d like to think so….
Tales From The Betting Ring – Kempton 27/05/15 32RedSport.com sponsored card
Massive cash gamble went west at Kempton last night http://www.simonnott.co.uk/index.php/tales-from-the-betting-ring-kempton-park-251115/
Tales from the betting ring at Newbury today http://www.simonnott.co.uk/index.php/tales-from-the-betting-ring-newbury-the-bet365-festival-271115/
I can’t believe I hadn’t picked up on this blog in here before. Absolutely
first class Simon, so well written I felt I could actually have been there.More of the same please sir
Betting tales from Cheltenham today http://www.simonnott.co.uk/?p=1571
Terrific stuff Simon, look forward to reading more from you
after Christmas.All the best
Thanks for all the kind comments, here’s Kempton today http://www.simonnott.co.uk/index.php/tales-from-the-betting-ring-the-william-hill-winter-festival-kempton-day-2/
I have entered my blog into the UK Blog Awards, to even get to post I need some public votes. If you read them and enjoy them could you please spare a minute to vote for me? Many thanks. http://www.blogawardsuk.co.uk/ukba2016/my-entry/tales-betting-ring
Betting Shops – anyone remember ‘telephonic interruptions’? http://www.simonnott.co.uk/index.php/tales-from-the-betting-shop-how-they-used-to-pay-racing-back-a-tales-from-the-betting-ring-lean-time-special/
Thanks to all those that took the time to vote, I made the finals of the UK Blog Awards, winners decided in April. Here’s yesterday’s ‘Tales’ from Cheltenham http://www.simonnott.co.uk/index.php/tales-from-the-betting-ring-cheltenham-festival-trails-day-300116/
Betting Shops – anyone remember ‘telephonic interruptions’? http://www.simonnott.co.uk/index.php/tales-from-the-betting-shop-how-they-used-to-pay-racing-back-a-tales-from-the-betting-ring-lean-time-special/
This is an excellent article. It brought back many memories, both good and indifferent.
I remember telephonic interruptions. It was strange how, very often, when the telephone ceased being interrrupted there was a different leader at the head of affairs compared with the horse in front before the interruption occurred. I pretty much always put this down to mistaken colours, a circumstance that could also be resolved by the ‘rapid late headway’ legend you mention. The contrast between the race narrative given by the commentator and that reported in the Sporting life the following day was sometimes stark. I’ve seen ‘rapid late headway’ described on the blower turn into ‘made all, comfortably’ by the following morning.
As a callow youth I was always intrigued by ‘no offers’. This told me that the bookmakers didn’t want to lay this horse, so naturally I was honour bound to back it when the market got round to quoting a price for the beast.
Then there was the boardman. For those not as old as I am, which is probably everybody, the introduction of dumb screens showing prices for each race sounded the death knell for artistic expression in licensed betting shops.
Prior to the rollout of these screens in (I think) the late 1970s a company named Jackson & Lowe printed lists of runners for each race of the day and supplied them to off-course bookmakers.
The original J&L sheets were narrow and generally pinned to a blackboard. A boardman armed with a box of coloured chalks would write the shows against each horse as they were given out by Extel broadcasts through loudspeakers in the shop. The price of the favourite in the race was normally indicated in red. Following the race the boardman would record the result, SP, tote returns etc on a separate part of the blackboard.
Using the full range of chalks and varying fonts, one boardman I knew produced true works of art comparable to the output of Velasquez, Monet and Banksy. Well, perhaps not Velasquez. Or Monet. Anyway, it’s a shame some of these boards could not be preserved for posterity in some kind of Betting Shop Museum, but I guess this was not possible due to the impermanent nature of chalk.
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